From Yesterday
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: Yami/Yuugi. Because you can wait for as long as it takes, when you have to.


Yami x Yuugi

**From Yesterday**

_Relative to point of view  
So when I catch a glimpse of you  
Every time you come around  
The room lights up  
_Josh Ritter

_Every day, in my head, I compose letters to you. It doesn't matter where I am- sometimes I'm walking down the street, or I'm on the train, and I think as I stare at the sky, or the pavement, or the rain falling against the glass of the window, what it is that I would write to you, if I had an address that the post service would deliver to. Sometimes I trace the words on the condensation when I'm in the shower, and my notebooks are full of little lines, sometimes just words, scribbled in the margins, scratched out so hard that I break through to the next page, and make marks there, too. All those black biro lines make me think of you. Sad, isn't it?_

_They're long and rambling, these letters, and inconsequential. Stupid things, like how I am feeling today and the joke Joey made that had me laughing all the way through second lesson and the way Tristan pulled faces at the math teacher's back. The new shoes that Anzu made us look at for ages and the way Ryou looks happier these days. That Rebecca sent me an email or that Mokuba stopped by the shop yesterday to say hello, filling me in on how his brother is doing these days. Incoherent, just a jumble of thoughts and feelings. They probably wouldn't make sense, you know, and you probably wouldn't be interested, anyway. You'd probably just throw them away, crumple them up. _

_But you will never get them, so it is okay. _

It had been nearly two years since the Pharaoh had left. One year, eleven months, three days and- and there Yuugi lost count. He hadn't been aware of time, when he was playing that final game; aware of anything, in reality (he'd made up for it since then, every day being checked off on a calendar, each hour counted in his mind). All that there had been was the cards in front of him, the man across from him, and the fear that surrounded him with an unconquerable intensity.

What if he won?

What if he lost?

And he had been so lonely, ever since his mind had been left empty. He counted up all the hours once, and was so scared when it came to the thousands. Had it really been that long since he had been able to speak to the Pharaoh? The first few hours had been torture enough. The first few days worse. And each day since then, he had woken up hoping that, against all logic, the Pharaoh might have reappeared. Yuugi had slipped back into his soul room soon after, to see if he could go and sit in the Pharaoh's, to comfort himself a little, but there was no door anymore. It was just a room, and the bright colours of his youth, he realised, had faded a little. There were fewer toys now, and the haze of shadow in the corners was growing. Maybe that was growing up, maybe that was loss.

Life, on the surface, had not changed that much though, except for the fact that he was a little more confident now, and a little quieter, too, even though he knew that it didn't make a lot of sense. His friends noted that there was a sort of silent resilience about him- people were less prone to pick on him, and not only because of his rapidly growing group of friends. There was something hard about the way he could look at you, now, something that made him look less like a kicked puppy.

He still thought about the Pharaoh a lot, wondering where he was and whether he was in the position to think about him, too. He could see that same look in Ryou's eyes sometimes, too- not sadness, not hopelessness, just… emptiness, as if he had not quite adjusted to the cool space inside of him. Cool was the right word, he thought: a place where something real had once been, because those spirits had been as real as anything else, and now the lingering impressions of them were beginning to lose their heat. And Ryou had never had a presence like his own- his had been far crueller, and if he felt a loss, then how was Yuugi not supposed to be okay about it?

He wished that he and Ryou could talk about it, but the other boy refused to be drawn on the subject, refused totally to recount anything of what happened between his own spirit and himself. There was pain whenever anyone brought him up, pain that you could see in his clenched fists and deepening frown, and soon people realised not to do it in front of him. The same had happened with Yuugi; people were always very careful when they tried to talk about his yami in front of him. He knew that they did talk about him, about it all, when he and Ryou were not around, and he was sure that he should have been offended by that, but… but for whatever reason, he just was not.

Yuugi knew they were only trying to protect him.

It was winter, and although there had been no snow as of yet Yuugi could tell it was coming. December had been a cold month that year. He could taste the bite of frost in the air, sharp and a little bit painful against his lungs, and he smiled a little at the puffs of his breath in the air as he walked home. He had grown two inches in the last year, and he felt a little better for it, a little like he could hold his own ground. He was still small though, still a target with his bright, star-shaped hair and slender frame, and he still hunched over so as to not draw attention to himself.

He still blinked, on occasion, when he saw his shadow, stretched out in front of him, the angle of light looking for all the world like there was someone else inside of him, someone taller and pointier and _different_.

But it wasn't Yami, was it? It never could be, never could be him ever again.

_Sometimes I wonder if you were ever real, if everything we did together was all just me, pretending. It could have been just one elaborate fantasy, one wonderful dream. Just a lonely kid with an imaginary friend gone too far, a loser who lost himself in a world that wasn't real, and idiot who didn't ever stop believing. It makes a lot more sense that way, I know. All the magic, all the games, all the fantastic things that never could have happened, but did anyway. Maybe I should just be more like Seto, and start to think that none of it was ever real, that all of it was some trick that I haven't quite figured out yet: a joke I missed the punchline to._

_Everyone is so careful not to mention you to me. I don't think they know how I will react, if I'm at the place to laugh yet. For the weeks after you left I was subdued, I know… I don't think they know if it is healthy for me to want to start talking about you yet. I don't blame them, mind you, because I don't know how I will react, either._

_It is sweet of them to care, but it is starting to feel like you didn't ever exist._

He was gone, gone for good, and this was not like when his Grandpa's soul had been stolen: there was no bad guy to fight, no tournament to win. There was no chance of this ever getting better, nothing proactive that he could do to fix it and make it all okay. There was no one to blame for the mess, because Yami had only wanted to return to where he belonged, and that wasn't his fault. He wasn't to blame for that, after all. Yuugi knew that there was nothing he could do now, and that scared him a little bit.

This was real life, and he missed the fairy-tale time of battles to save the world, an unknown voice in his mind.

He wondered if his yami felt the same way, or if he was perfectly happy.

But of course, there was no way to tell, not really. Sometimes he still thought he could hear Yami, and woke up in a sweat, his name on his lips before he realised that, no, that was just a dream. Just a dream of what had once been, and what could be no more. He would sink back on his pillows, and squeeze his eyes tightly shut, trying to see if he could get back to that far off dream-place where Yami was still with him and the world still made sense and he was still unaccountably happy, all of the time. Those were days when he could go to sleep with a smile on his face.

At some point, he was going to have to heal, the grief was going to have to stop, and he was going to have to come to the conclusion that whilst he had once been in love with the voice in his head, he couldn't be any more. He just couldn't be.

Yuugi just wished he could figure out how to stop being in love with him.

But that was hard to forget, it was a fact hard to ignore because whilst he had friends and family that he cared about, had even had that petered-out crush on Anzu for a while, there was nothing in this world that could compare to how he had felt about the Pharaoh before he had been taken away from him. How could it be? No one could ever understand that bond that they had, that they used to have. He and Yami had known each other better than anything else, had been able to talk to each other internally. He didn't have to read Yuugi's mind: they always felt the exact same way about things.

Yami had always understood, better than anyone else.

He could always make Yuugi feel better too, even when he was low and convinced of his own uselessness. He could still feel the warmth of those embraces, when they both retired to their soul rooms when Yuugi's body was sleeping, and Yami would knock on the door like he was coming to pick him up on a date and they would stand there, breaching those two worlds and two minds, talking and touching, first with hands and then with mouths and then with the press of skin on skin and then-

"Yuugi?"

He stared, and stared at the figure in front of him, leaning in the doorway of the toyshop, obviously waiting for someone.

For him.

He was taller than Yuugi, but still not tall- after all, it didn't take much to tower over him. It was shadowed, where he was standing, dark enough to hide the man waiting for him. Yuugi watched him warily, because though he knew the voice he didn't trust it, didn't believe it, because though it was as thick and warm as a caress it couldn't be real, could it?

Surely, if he was back, he would have known already, known in advance.

_We used to be able to read each others thoughts. Didn't we? _

_Do you remember that?_

_I didn't even have to think in words, you just caught shapes of emotion and understood, unquestioningly. It was colour and it was sensation, it was shapes and it was unfathomable meaning. It was wonderful, as if we really were two parts of the same thing, of the same spirit. Now, I cannot read your mind, and you cannot read mine. It is horrible, you know, to be able to think clearly without you hearing me: in a way, I miss the invasion of my privacy. I wondered, for a while, if all of it hadn't just been a figment of my imagination. Maybe this is, as well… but no. _

_You were there. We did understand each other. _

_It scares me now, not to know what you are thinking. _

_It scares me more, to not know where you are. _

"Is that you?"

Yuugi flinched backwards even as he asked the question, almost stepping into the road as a wave of fear suddenly swept over him. Not fear that the man might do anything to him, but fear that he might not, fear that he might not be real at all: he had imagined scenarios like this too often, and now it looked like it might be real it still could not be. he didn't think that he could cope with stepping forward, trying to touch that arm or that chest or that face, only to see his hand fall right through to touch bare brick or the wood of the doorway.

Not again.

He considered turning, for a moment, and running away. His friends would still be at the arcade, he could stay with one of them for the night. He wouldn't have to face this- the illusion and then the sorrowful night alone, or the other option…

As if sensing what was going on through Yuugi's head the man took a step forward into the light, reaching out to grab for him, to make him stay. He had travelled through time and space and dimension to find his way back to here, to this place, to this moment. He didn't know how long he had been away, couldn't tell exactly, but Yuugi didn't look that much different… surely he couldn't have forgotten him? Not after all that they had been through? Not after all that they had meant to each other? But as he moved out of the doorway he came into the light, and Yuugi's breath hitched just as the man grabbed his arm.

They stilled.

He looked just the same, as if no time had passed for him at all, Yuugi thought. How unfair that he should still look just as beautiful. His hair still fell in the exact same way, his eyes still glinted, his mouth was still as warm looking, lips slightly parted oh, too soft looking. Wearing the clothes that Yuugi had always worn, the uniform that the spiritual manifestation of Yami had worn as well. He was just as perfect as he was in Yuugi's memories, even though he had been convinced that he had been idealising him in his absence. Two long years of celibacy, after those heated moments only in his mind… and now he was confronted with the real Yami, a new body, one that could touch him and hold him. One that could stay with him. One that could make sense of everything. If, that is, it was real.

Yuugi stared up into those eyes and found himself diminishing: he could see two tiny reflections of his own face in that reflective black pupils, wide and slightly unfocused as Yami took in that expression of shock.

Yuugi…

Yuugi looked older, from this close. There were lines of worry where there hadn't been before, there was a darkness in his expression that was too different to the light-hearted joy that he remembered. Yuugi looked like he had suffered. How long had he been away in this world? He had not meant for it to be this long, had not meant it to be long enough to hurt him, but as he well knew, any time at all apart from the other half of your soul is too long. The man that had once been Pharaoh bit his lip, not noticing the slight dilation in Yuugi's pupils as he did so, still staring as he was at that face that he had missed so much, too much, too hopelessly.

"Yami?"

Yuugi sounded hesitant, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing in front of him. Yami wondered again how long he had been away- months, he had thought, but perhaps it was longer? This surprise, this shock, seemed to suggest it. Yami nodded, trying to be convincing.

"It's me."

His grasp on Yuugi's upper arm relaxed, sliding down his forearm to take hold of his hand. Yuugi let him, but did not squeeze back.

"What are you doing here?"

The confusion was obvious in his voice.

"I've come home."

There was a long silence. Yuugi tried to reach out through his mind, the way that they used to, but instead of that link now there was nothing. It was as if he had reached out to touch something on the other side of a brick wall, he thought: he couldn't see it, could only hear the faintest hints from the other side. Yuugi could almost feel the scrape of the brick against the palm of his hand. Where had their mental link gone? Why had it? Yuugi was sure, too, that if he were to go into his mind again no door would have appeared from his soul room to another. They were separate. Was that the curse to giving Yami a body of his own? That Yuugi would no longer be able to read his mind?

That they would no longer be two halves of the same whole?

"Yuugi, do… You still want me here, don't you?"

_You're too close. I can feel the warmth of you next to me. I have never been able to feel your heat before now, because spirits do not give off warmth, ever, something that I know you always missed. What an odd this to mourn, I always thought. And yet here you are, just as you had once hoped to be. You're more real now than you ever have been, but I miss when you were insubstantial spirit, because we were connected. I miss you. God, I miss you._

_Is that strange? To miss you when you are standing right next to me?_

_Why are you here? I don't understand… I thought that everything you wanted was over there, on the other side? That was why you left, wasn't it? To be there, because there was better that here? Then why did you come back?_

_What is different? What has changed?_

_Why is this harder than I imagined? That's not fair. I am not owed something easy, by now?_

Yuugi started, not realising how long he had been quiet for. Forcing a smile, he tightened his fist around Yami's hand and started to pull him towards the door.

"You'd better come in."

Inside, they sat awkwardly on the couch, side by side and still holding hands. It was so warm, that touch of skin, so warm that it made them both want to press their bodies up against each other and see if they could heat the rest of themselves just from that. But there was still too much between them, two much that neither could quite say. Yuugi could not drag his eyes away from the floor.

Yami just couldn't look away from Yuugi.

"How long have I been away?"

Yuugi shifted almost unnoticeable towards the other even as he spoke, so that their knees almost met.

"Nearly two years."

Yami closed his eyes. He had hoped for less time to have passed that that. Almost as soon as he had walked away and through to his true time he had regretted leaving. It took only a few hours for the ache to arrive, and it was far more than any of the grief he had felt at leaving behind any of his other friends. But Yuugi… he had always been more than a friend, more than a lover. A soul mate, perhaps, was the right word: two people so irrevocably linked that it hurt when he realised that he would never see him again, hurt so hard that he had known almost immediately that the only thing to do was to return, no matter how hard that might have been to do. Yuugi's shoulders were shaking, though he wasn't crying yet. He felt at a loss what to do- when had he forgotten how to comfort the one that he loved?- before instinct took over and he reached across to touch his other hand to the crown of Yuugi's head. That small touch triggered something, a knowledge within them and without thinking they moved on instinct, clawing at each other's clothing until their mouths met moments later, deep and pressing, as if each were trying to sink into the other, so that they would never be apart again.

They half-carried each other up the stairs.

Yuugi had his eyes squeezed so tight that it almost hurt, until the other traces soft fingertips around them to ease the lines away. He was too afraid of opening his eyes and discovering that it was all just a dream.

They undressed quickly, exposing pale and slim bodies to the darkness of Yuugi's childhood room, still decorated with paraphernalia of youthful exuberance. The golden box from which the Millennium Puzzle had come from sat still on the windowsill, next to his deck, though neither noticed it right then. The feeling of real flesh was so much more than the half-unreal touches of two soul forms. It caused them to gasp aloud just at innocent caresses, let alone at the long lines their tongues traced against the skin, the places that their hands slipped as they tried to get closer to each other, still closer. Yuugi didn't know if he told Yami that he loved him as the other pushed him to heady and ecstatic completion, but he did know that he said it afterwards, as Yami collapsed on top of him and kissed where he could reach with furious intent, saying the same words over and over again.

_Yami? Yami?_

_Are you listening?_

_There are so many things that I still need to tell you._

"Yuugi?"

"Yes?"

"I came back for you."

And although they may not have been as close as they once had been, the man that had once lived in his head reached for Yuugi's hand once more from across the bed. He smiled, bright and wide, and rolled to press the full length of their bodies together.

"Yami?"

He smiled at the half-asleep and breathy tone of Yuugi's voice.

"Yeah?"

"I- I'm glad that you did."


End file.
